026b - Squidville

SpongeBob and Patrick get their new reef blowers and then start blowing and sucking things up with them, eventually sucking up Squidward's windows and door. When Squidward demands them to give the windows and door back, they shoot them at Squidward's house, destroying it. Squidward tells SpongeBob and Patrick that "This is the final straw. I am going to move so far away that I will be able to brag about it. I would rather tear out my brain stem, carry it to the middle of the nearest four-way intersection, and skip rope with it than go on living where I do now." Just then, his TV falls beside him amidst the rubble of his house, playing an commercial for "Tentacle Acres," a private community created exclusively for octopuses, and, ironically, the guy advertising says exactly the same things Squidward said, only as questions. As Squidward watches, Patrick changes the screen to static, saying "I hate this channel." Squidward moves there, where he finds that the residents all look, sound and act similar to him, even living in houses identical to his, much to his delight, not even eyeing a rock or pineapple in sight. Before Squidward can go to sleep, eager to start his new life afresh, SpongeBob and Patrick call Squidward in an attempt to get him to return home, but Squidward refuses, and he therefore abruptly hangs up on them after saying that there is no possible way he is returning home, being among his own kind.

Squidward begins his first day at Tentacle Acres by going biking, and finds that all the other octopi are riding their bikes as well. He then goes grocery shopping, and is impressed by the local food market, which even carries "canned bread". He then sees an Interpretive Dance Academy, where he dances in a group with others who share his style of dancing. At the end of the day, he sees a clarinet-playing trio performing in the park, which he joins. On Squidward's second day at Tentacle Acres, he rinses-lathers-and-repeats the process he did on the first day around. However, as the days succeed another, Squidward keeps performing the same routine from morning (starting from bike riding, to canned bread purchases, to the dance academy lessons, to the clarinet trio) to night. Again and again, Squidward keeps repeating the same process, and because there's nothing new about it, the smile he once had begins to lose its shape and Squidward starts to get to used to doing what he does every day. As the days continue, Squidward is starting to look horribly bored with his ideal life and eventually, that boredom leads to depression. Finally, Squidward realizes one day, while playing with the trio, that his dream life wasn't everything he had hoped it to be, and Squidward stops playing before he finishes. Squidward feels much worse off than he did when he left SpongeBob and Patrick.

While sitting on a park bench, lamenting this, Squidward hears a reef blower, hoping SpongeBob is there, but is crushed when Squidward finds out that is not to be (it seems that at this point, Squidward is hoping to see someone not of his species, even if it has to be the person he hates). The squid then leaves the reef blower unattended, with a sign that says "Back Whenever," and Squidward starts playing with it (in the same manner that SpongeBob and Patrick did in the beginning of the episode), irritating and scaring his neighbors out of their wits in the process. They eventually become fed up with his behavior, and form an angry mob and chase him as they are now on the warpath against Squidward. Meanwhile, SpongeBob and Patrick come to Tentacle Acres to apologize to Squidward and try to force him to return home. The surveillance guards tell them that their kind isn't welcome here and refuses to open the gate for them. However, Patrick's bad breath travels through the intercom into the room where the guards are, knocking them out and causing them to fall over onto the button that opens the gate. They enter the village, and see Squidward cornered by the angry mob, who show him "A well thought-out and organized list of complaints," and are demanding him to leave, and Squidward agrees. SpongeBob and Patrick are unable to identify him among the crowd of near-identical squids, with SpongeBob saying that "Any one of these Squidwards could be the real Squidward!" Squidward then uses the reef blower to launch himself out of the village, and SpongeBob says "Well, we know one thing: it sure isn't that guy!".